Lansley warns of deeper NHS cuts

pharmafile | May 17, 2010 | News story | |  NHS, NHS funding, election, government 

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has warned the NHS may face deeper cuts than expected.

Lansley, who was appointed Health Secretary last week as part of the UK’s new coalition government, promised to keep the Conservative’s election pledge that the NHS budget would rise above inflation during this parliament.

But he admitted in an interview with the BBC last week that “there was a case for making greater savings”.

Before the election, the head of the NHS Sir David Nicholson announced the need to make £20 billion in efficiency cuts by 2014, a policy that Andy Burnham, the former Labour health secretary, had started to implement.

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Lansley told the BBC’s Today programme that this figure “implied something like 3-3.5%, probably about 3% efficiency savings each year in the NHS … we may need to do more, because we have the increase in demand.”

The exact figures have not yet been given but George Osborne, the new Chancellor, has promised to announce an emergency budget on 22 June that will include details on spending cuts.

Health ministers named in new coalition government

Meanwhile, the new health ministers for Lansley have been named. They include three Conservatives: Simon Burns, Anne Milton and Earl Howe, and the Liberal Democrat Paul Burstow, who will all work under Lansley in the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government.

Simon Burns has worked as under-secretary of state for health and shadow health minister whilst Anne Milton is a former Surrey Hospital nurse who will now become parliamentary under-secretary of state.

Earl Howe, an elected hereditary peer, will also become parliamentary under secretary of state after being the Conservative spokesman for health and social services in the House of Lords since 1997. Paul Burstow served as the Lib Dem shadow health secretary and is currently the only Lib Dem health minister.

Lansley has yet to state what role, if any, Lib Dem health spokesman Norman Lamb will have. 

Ben Adams

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